Longtime Liberal Sen. David Smith retires on Monday at 75, the Senate’s mandatory retirement age. Not one to shy away from the media, with whom he enjoyed hobnobbing, Smith was a lifelong Liberal partisan, former MP and campaign manager, credited for Jean Chrétien’s majority wins in 1993, 1997 and 2000.

In paying tribute to the affable retiree, Sen. Mobina Jaffer offered these kind words: “Sen. Smith has always been first in inviting us all for a drink whenever there has been an opportunity, and he has always been very thoughtful to make sure I have my special drink.”

“I wish you all the best,” Smith said in his own farewell speech, then, perhaps alluding to Jaffer’s comments, added, “Continue to be the chamber of sober second thought.”

Seal of approval

Another senator who has reached 75, Céline Hervieux-Payette, saw one of her bills pass the Senate just days after she retired.

Bill S-208, short-titled the National Seal Products Day Act, passed the Senate May 3. Hervieux-Payette is a vocal proponent of the seal hunt, considering it a renewable natural resource that Canada has every right to exploit; indeed she went so far as to travel to the North to be trained and licensed as a seal hunter to demonstrate her support, once musing that she would consider taking it up more seriously once she retired.

Her bill still has to get through the House of Commons, of course, but happily for her, Liberal MP Scott Simms says he’ll sponsor it there.

Break depends on bills

According to the parliamentary calendar, MPs could take their summer break as early as June 9. But Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc says that will depend on when the Liberals’ priority bills are passed.

They include the budget bill, the medical assistance in dying bill, likely the RCMP labour relations bill, and of course, the motion to set up a committee on electoral reform.

If the House did rise June 9, it would mean the Commons had sat 13 weeks in the first half of this year. That compares to 15 weeks for the same period in the first half of 2014 and 2015, and 16 weeks in the first half of 2013. The Senate often sits later than the House of Commons in June.

Elizabeth May, athlete

Green Party leader Elizabeth May says that she is being run ragged by rule changes the Liberals have carried forward from the previous Parliament. The changes limit when she is able to put forward amendments to bills.

To boil it down, May used to be able to put forward amendments during report stage – in the House of Commons – rather than at committee. But now, MPs who are independent or from parties that weren’t officially recognized table their amendments at the committee stage of a bill instead.

May says this forces her to attend myriad committees and she sometimes faces the prospect of being in several places at once.

“I can try to run from one to the other to try to defend my amendments,” she says, but “It’s exhausting.

“I really think this is going to take years off of my life, that this is happening to me now.”

Heard in the House

Green Party leader Elizabeth May: “Can (the prime minister) give this place his word that the Liberal members of Parliament on the (electoral reform) committee will be free to vote in the interest of Canadian democracy, and not merely for partisan advantage?”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “I can assure the leader of the Green Party that I will no more control the Liberal members on that committee than she will control the Green member on that committee.”

Meanwhile, from the cheap seats

Observing the Commons in action on Wednesday from the public gallery was former longtime Speaker Peter Milliken. Asked by a journalist if MPs seemed any better behaved in this Parliament than in the ones he presided over, Milliken laughed – and shook his head.

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